Despite having been kidnapped twice, Stephen Farrell is a careful risk taker, writes his friend and fellow journalist Peter Beaumont.
He knew that the more you expose yourself, the greater the inevitability of something awful touching you.
The first time Stephen Farrell was kidnapped was in Iraq in 2004. It was a brief affair that ended with him negotiating the return of his armoured car and most of his equipment.
Typically, Farrell then turned the ordeal into an opportunity, writing up his encounter as an interview casting light on Iraqi attitudes towards George W Bush.
It is no surprise that after the disastrous air strike on two tankers in Kunduz in Afghanistan, Farrell, now of the New York Times, should want to be there, despite the risk. The tragedy this time is that his release has come at the cost of his fixer’s life and that of one of the British soldiers sent to rescue him.
Farrell’s work took him from India, his first foreign posting, to the Middle East as correspondent for the London Times, covering the second intifada, and then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The last few years have seen him working as a member of the Times’s Baghdad bureau.
Despite having been kidnapped twice, Farrell is a careful risk taker. He knew that the more you expose yourself, the greater the inevitability of something awful touching you.
Farrell (46) seems to be mellowing a little of late.
He has been working on a book on Hamas and enjoying married life.